[Mailman-Users] mailman/nntplib.py/inn problem

[J Kinsley]

First of all, I want to say Mailman is exactly what I have wanted but
didn't know existed.  I run a dozen or so mail lists with web
archives and news gating using a glued together mess of shell
scripts, C programs, Perl scripts, and procmail scripts.  It's one of
those things that started as a simple task and sort of evolved over
time.  Now that the number of lists are growing, it is fast becoming
an administration nightmare.  Mailman is the perfect solution. Thanks
to all you who made it available.

Now for the problem I have encountered.  I've concluded that it has
99.9% probability of being an INN configuration problem, but one
which directly effects the operation of Mailman.  I'm posting here on
the gut feeling that others here have encountered the same thing.
When Mailman connects to the news server using the NNTP class in the
Python dist, it is connecting via innd directly and therefore only
has a limited subset of the commands.  I get this same limited subset
of commands by telneting to news.bticc.net 119 from the same host it
runs on.  However, if I telnet in from my other box, I get the full
set of commands and the newslog shows the connection being handled by
nnrpd.  If I configure Mailman to send the messages to the INN
running on the remote host, it works fine.

For the most part, my INN configuration is the default Redhat
configuration for INN-2.0 with only paths, hostname, and newsfeeds
changed.  I know the solution is probably quite simple such as a
tweak in one of the INN configuration files, but I have not yet
determined exactly what it is.  If anyone knows what tweak, I would
greatly appreciate a hint.

I am not directly subscribed to the list, so if anyone replies,
please Cc: a copy to me directly.  Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Jarrod Kinsley
 

P.S.  Prior to finding Mailman, I had been contemplating a hack to
hypermail to implement SQL based archive indexing.  One of the lists
I archive has over 36000 messages in it, and I would like to be able
to do global subject, author, thread, date (and possibly keyword)
lookups over the entire archive.  Right now each month has its own
set of indexes.  Has anyone proposed such an idea for Mailman?  I
might tinker around with it after I familiarize myself with the
internal workings of Mailman and after I get a more pressing project
finished.